


i'll weather the storm with you

by chuchisushi



Series: howl [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anal Sex, Anniversary, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 03:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They spoke no words. The visitor, the host, the white chrysanthemum.”<br/>- Ryota</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll weather the storm with you

It’s an anniversary, but Iruka doesn’t know that until later. All he knows is that he _cannot find_ Kakashi, and that Kakashi has never hidden himself away like this before. (At least, he’s never done so during their time together as touchstones and intimates--tucked himself in hard-to-find places, shut himself down, avoided him, tried to drive him off--but never just disappeared.)

Iruka wakes up in bed alone, which isn’t so unusual, but that Kakashi had left without waking Iruka up in the process _is_. They sleep tangled with each other, their chakra pressing close around the other, and Iruka has spent many a night willingly suffering Kakashi’s freezing cold hands and feet in places that really shouldn’t encounter such temperatures for the pleasure of doing so.

Instead, Kakashi had disentangled himself from Iruka’s greedy clutches this morning without waking him and had disappeared without telling him where or why.

 

Iruka uses his lunch break to track down Gai, cornering the other jonin and ANBU in a training ground and (demanding) asking reasonably politely if Gai knew where Kakashi was.

Gai asks him what day it is.

Iruka blinks at him but tells him.

Gai looks a little shifty and says, apologetically, that he knows but that he can’t tell Iruka. It’s one of Kakashi’s secrets, and his disappearance is a result of one of the many, myriad things Kakashi doesn’t (cannot) directly say to Iruka.

Iruka asks if Kakashi is in the village, at least.

Gai says yes.

Iruka thanks him and then goes back to the Academy and confiscates seven notes, one sharp kunai, and four tadpoles in a jam jar filled with pond water, gives out three detentions, and teaches the brats about Sand’s history somewhere in there.

He lovingly boots all of them out the door when school ends (detention to be served on the weekend, because Iruka is a _tyrant_ in the classroom) and then goes to his shift at the Mission Desk, because if Gai had asked him for the _date_ , this has to be a regular thing and thus nothing that Kakashi hasn’t weathered before.

Which is not to say that Iruka’s still not worried and annoyed and thus twenty times harder on the unfortunate individuals who try to slip unacceptable mission reports past him today and that he doesn’t bugger off halfway through his double shift after shanghaiing an unfortunate Kotetsu into taking his place for the night.

Kakashi may be _able_ to deal with it on his own, but he doesn’t _have_ to anymore. Sometimes Iruka feels like Kakashi forgets that. He doesn’t begrudge the older man for it, though, because, to be honest, Kakashi had stood alone for so long before their relationship that Iruka is still sort of surprised that Kakashi had offered to be his touchstone in the first place all those months ago. Iruka just has to remind Kakashi every once in a while that he’s here for Kakashi in the same way that Kakashi is there for him.

(And maybe kick his ass a little to get the point to stick.)

Iruka tracks him down. He’s not really supposed to casually use his other set of skills inside Konoha's walls, for the risk of exposing himself, but Iruka is as careful as he can be with the emotions he’s experiencing over Kakashi’s general idiocy. He doesn’t get dressed in his Owl gear, simply packs a bag and starts the first jutsu in his own home, using the chakra-memory of Kakashi in his sheets and Iruka’s own aura. He can feel his awareness of the landscape spreading out over the city like ripples across a reflective pool, and he ignores the stones of the other signatures he recognizes, waiting for the subtle wave of energy to bounce off of his target and return to him.

(His mother had been able to saturate the landscape with her own chakra, swamping her surroundings with a fine, subconscious awareness of what moved within the area; she’d used it for battle, an offshoot of her medi-nin training that had been co-opted and adapted for the field. Iruka had changed it even further for his sensor specialization, for his work as Owl, turning it into one more tool in his arsenal.)

He gets back the weak traces of the path Kakashi had taken, but not the strong ping he would have if Kakashi had been within his sensing radius; Iruka stands and settles his bag more-firmly on his shoulder before exiting his apartment.

He takes the rooftop ways, tracking the faint signature of Kakashi’s passage; he passes a few nin here and there and acknowledges them with a smile and a nod if he recognizes them, but doesn’t speak.

He passes the family compounds in the Old Quarter: the Hyuuga, the Sarutobi, the Aburame, the empty Uchiha compound--past the shops and main marketplaces and the Nara, the Akimichi, the Yamanaka family estates, lying in a defensive, catty-cornered triangle to each other, the Nara forest stretching out from their complex as trees, cultivated meadow, and posted signs warning people about the deer. Iruka crosses the innermost wall of Konoha, the first that the city had raised long ago, after their founding, and enters the primarily civilian quarter. Here, the houses reflect the dual nature of their village: flat roofs allow the easy travel of passing shinobi, but the heights of the buildings are smaller, there’s wider walkways, and more railings. Apartment complexes are formed in circles or squares around courtyards, the little patches of green a feature not commonly seen in shinobi buildings, the open-air areas too-easily spied upon for a nin’s comfort.

There’s family compounds out here as well, but these families are rowdy mixtures of nin and civilians, joyful conglomerations of familial mutts. The Inuzuka are located out here, as the houses give way to a ‘safe zone’ before the most-sheltered training grounds. The most-recent wall of Konoha lies before Iruka, flanked on both sides by barracks and a few outlying offices of the T&I nature, and Iruka signs himself out as leaving the village proper when he pauses atop the structure underneath one of the torii gates.

Outside the walls, past the scattering of inns and wayhouses catering to travelers nestled close to more barracks, lie the abodes of farmers, hunters, rangers, those close to the earth that keep the basal beat of the Village moving with their steady trickle of supplies. Konoha doesn’t take feudal tithes anymore--those that live outside the walls are free to sell their wares wherever it suits them--but most know where their loyalties lie and where their protection comes from. The wealthier of them make D-rank missions; genin are more efficient than any ox or horse for picking the stones out of a field. There are family compounds out here as well, those that began humbly and grew to greatness, or those that desired to keep their connection to their roots.

Iruka finds Kakashi out here, between the physical solidity of Konoha’s outer walls and the mental strength of their city’s innermost layer of barriers, and comes to rest outside the wooden gate of the Hatake family compound.

There’s a single lantern hanging at it, burning a tag meant to provide twenty-four hours of light. The family crest is painted on it, matching the carving on the gate doors and the columns supporting it. The fence that stretches around the family house and outbuildings is age and rain-weathered, but looks as solid as it probably did the day it was erected.

He steps closer and feels the ancestral wards react to him, roll to life with all the sluggish, powerful weight of the earth underneath his feet. They push against him like questing, outstretched hands, skate over his body and his chakra; Iruka thinks he feels the familiarity of Kakashi’s touch within them and lets them intrude, standing firm.

They retreat, and the gates creak open of their own accord.

Iruka steps into a quiet courtyard with flagstones that have been swept clean, green moss growing between the worn rocks, and Kakashi sitting in the front, partly-open sliding door of the family house, half in and half out of of the dark interior.

Iruka walks into the empty space between them, steps silent, pauses in the middle of the courtyard, and Kakashi doesn’t look up at him; his head is tilted downwards, his eyes shaded. He’s wearing a kimono Iruka’s never seen, dark cloth and a half-obscured pattern; his pale feet are bare and it’s so unlike anything Kakashi ever wears or does that it unsettles Iruka further.

Kakashi is sitting and quiet and there’s a single flower held in his hands; his fingertips press gently against the stem and spin it slowly around and around and around as he stares down at it.

It stills.

Kakashi looks up, meeting Iruka’s eyes.

And Iruka suddenly _knows_.

 

He knows and crosses the flagstones with his sandals scraping and seems to gain momentum with every step he takes until he’s barreling forward, unstoppable, and he sees Kakashi’s eye widen as he comes to his own realization and half-rises to his feet in time for Iruka to catch him around the middle, scooping him up by his stupid, twiglike waist and slinging him over his shoulder in the world’s least-textbook fireman’s carry. Kakashi’s breath wheezes out of him as the muscles of his stomach hit Iruka’s shoulder. Iruka barges into the too-dark, too-quiet house like some kind of whirlwind, roughly kicking off his sandals even as he tucks his flaring, rising chakra tight tight tight around Kakashi’s too-still aura, and Iruka doesn’t imagine the way Kakashi’s entire body shudders at it.

Iruka follows Kakashi’s directions instinctively: he veers away from the places that make Kakashi tense, obeys the pressure of Kakashi’s hands clutched in his uniform, and stays just as silent as Kakashi himself is in all the important ways that the last Hatake himself asks him to even as his bare feet noisily slap against the just-washed floorboards.

Iruka lets him down when he reaches the correct room; he tips Kakashi off his shoulder and onto the futon laid out immaculately neat, waiting for them, and smiles in grim satisfaction at the way Kakashi’s landing has mussed it, at the way _he’s_ mussed _Kakashi_. Kakashi, who lies where he’d landed, eyes too-distant and _so_ , so quiet and as still as the dead whose memories reside within these walls; Kakashi, dressed in an elegant black kimono with the mountains and sparse trees of Lightning picked out in ash grey and bone white upon it, stark against their background; Kakashi, with his clothing knocked askew, the kimono falling open and revealing a slice of narrow, well-muscled chest and one long, pale leg escaping out of the side; Kakashi, with the white chrysanthemum, its petals delicate and curling and heavy, still held in his hand.

Iruka drops his bag to the tatami with a _thud_ and falls to his knees straddling Kakashi’s waist and meets his partner’s, touchstone’s, darling’s, _beloved’s_ eye with his own.

 

Kakashi smiles at him after a moment that feels like forever, his lips curving lopsided, and Iruka feels his heart break and bleed where it sits in his chest.

But he still doesn’t speak, just bends like bowing and captures Kakashi’s lips with his own, hands finding his, and Kakashi lets him take the chrysanthemum out of his grip and lay it aside.

Iruka makes love to Kakashi like begging, mouth open on unsaid (but not unheard) words; the arch of his back is like the curve of the heavens above as he tries to tie Kakashi to him, to here, to earth and life and the existence that they have together. He stays silent and swallows the compliments, the filthy, heated truths he wants to press into Kakashi’s flushing skin when he strips him out of that hateful black kimono, throwing it aside and not caring if it ends up wrinkled; he traces lips against Kakashi’s throat, over his chest instead, scrapes his canines and eyeteeth over his pulse gently and then not so gently. He gives himself to Kakashi, offers him his body and heart and soul, holds him close, and thrills with triumph and relief and bittersweet joy when he feels Kakashi’s hands come up to hold his hips steady as he opens himself up, forehead pressed sweaty against a pale breastbone

And when Kakashi takes him from behind, when Iruka’s back bows underneath the delicious pressure, making the forest of the dead ground into his tan skin sway as though from the wind it’ll never feel, Iruka cries for Kakashi, fat salty tears rolling wet past his pleasure-silenced lips.

They’re not quiet in their lovemaking, their release, their reliving of a hundred other encounters that have tied them closer together, and, near their climax, Kakashi hauls Iruka upright, pulls him into his lap, swallows the moan Iruka makes when the motion drives Kakashi’s cock even deeper into him, and mouths ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ into the desperate contact of their tear-soaked kiss.

And afterwards--afterwards, as they lie sweaty and quiescent in the grasp of each other, Iruka turns his face into Kakashi’s hand and finds the scent of the chrysanthemum’s stem replaced by his own.

He makes a content noise, and Kakashi laughs as though he’d guessed his thoughts or sensed Iruka’s smug satisfaction, and they continue to lie there in silent vigil until they reach whatever quiet time Kakashi had been waiting for.

They rise together, still in silence, and Kakashi dresses himself in too-short sweatpants pilfered from Iruka’s bag, and Iruka slips into one of the oversized t-shirts Kakashi had left at Iruka’s apartment that he’d packed as well, and Kakashi picks up the white chrysanthemum and moves back into the house, Iruka trailing after him and heedless of the soft ache from his worn muscles.

Kakashi leads them to a bedroom with a double-wide futon and the faint smell of purple clover in the air, lingering like a memory, walks to the one tatami mat that is, perhaps, a little newer than the others, and bends to place the flower upon it.

He straightens, shoves his hands into the pockets of Iruka’s sweats, and slouches, dark eye fixed on the blossom; Iruka stands close but apart, aware of the privacy of the moment, and thinks that, in this still, eternal second, that Kakashi looks like the innocent child he must have been for a short time in this house, with his shoulders slumped and his delicate ankles revealed by Iruka’s too-short pants.

“He loved both of us so much,” Kakashi says simply, quietly, and Iruka presses his face to Kakashi’s shoulder, feels his eyes prickle and well again with sympathetic tears.

“Let’s go back to bed,” Iruka says, and Kakashi tilts his head, presses his cheek against Iruka where he leans on him, and closes his eye, shoulders relaxing.

“Okay,” Kakashi replies, and both of them bow deeply to the chrysanthemum and the memory of Hatake Sakumo before shutting the door to the master bedroom behind them.

Kakashi opens his room to the night, and both of them lie on the futon, counting the stars in the visible portion of the sky. The wind that slips past them smells sweet with the scent of clover and the damp earth of the family fields.

“I think it’ll thunderstorm before daybreak,” Iruka says.

Kakashi is quiet for a long moment before he replies, his words comfortably muffled by the way he’s pillowed his face on Iruka’s chest.

“Ah. They’d like that, I think. They both loved the rain.”

 

And Iruka smiles and strokes his fingers through Kakashi’s soft hair, and says, gently, truthfully, “Then I’m glad.”

**Author's Note:**

> Writing and editing OST:  
> Sam Tsui – Safe & Sound  
> MS MR – BTSK  
> Lana Del Rey – Young And Beautiful  
> and of course, much thanks to my beta end1essly uvu


End file.
